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Economic reports better than expected; Gold stagnates

American stock futures and Precious Metals rebounded this morning after two economic reports were released. The trade deficit narrowed to the smallest gap in nearly two years, and weekly jobless claims fell after economists expected an increase. The four week moving average of the jobless claims, however, increased slightly. Recently, good news for the American economy has worked the opposite way with Precious Metals, as good news makes the Federal Reserve less likely to institute another round of quantitative easing.

Economist David Rosenberg said the U.S. economy is not growing as quickly as it should. He said, “The overall story is that with the massive intervention by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve, they did manage to terminate the Great Recession in the mid part of 2009, but the reality is that we never had much of a recovery, at least in the economy. And in terms of what we’re seeing going forward, I still think that there’s more downside risk than upside potential.”

The Gold price was steady this morning, though losses in the euro seemed to be trying to pull it down. Societe Generale analyst Robin Bhar said, “Gold seems to have gotten a foothold above the $1,600 level and seems to be relatively stable. It’s still showing this correlation to riskier assets. We’ve seen a bit of a rally in the oil market and equities, and Gold has kept a par with those moves.” Bhar said he believes more stimulus from federal governments is needed to spur the Gold price higher at this point.